September is Healthy Aging Month, making it an ideal time to shed some light on an important issue that impacts millions as we age – our eyesight. With around 1.75 million people in the country having age-related macular degeneration, according to the National Institutes of Health, and another 2.2 million suffering from glaucoma, vision is […]
Stress in the World Today
We live in a world overrun by stress. Global urbanization, competition and the spread of technology have created a world in which access to information has become an obligation and necessity. People are now held accountable for their actions and whereabouts 24/7 and they are losing both their privacy and down time. In […]
How do we clean up a toxic disaster in LA’s back yard?
By Olga Khazan A version of this story ran in the Chatsworth Patch and NeonTommy. It’s only a 45-minute drive from downtown Los Angeles to one of the most toxic hills in the country _ a vivid case study of the chaos that ensues when scientific hubris meets corporate carelessness. Just follow U.S. 101 north into Ventura County, take […]
Senior CDC Howard Frumkin Official Demoted
Dr. Howard Frumkin, the embattled director of a little-known, but important division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been reassigned to a position with less authority, a smaller staff and a lower budget. Frumkin had led the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the National Center for Environmental […]
Why has the President declared a national emergency after the H1N1 flu has peaked?
Is the latest declaration about training hospitals to prepare for a surge in patients? Or is the declaration about giving maxiumum power to the government in order to have more control because the idea of a flu pandemic makes the feds feel so out of control? Is the response about government action that has to be taken to […]
With Natural Gas Drilling Boom, Pennsylvania Faces an Onslaught of Wastewater
The McKeesport Sewage Treatment Plant, one of nine plants on the Monongahela River that has treated wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling operations. (Joaquin Sapien/ProPublica) Workers at a steel mill and a power plant were the first to notice something strange about the Monongahela River last summer. The water that U.S. Steel and Allegheny Energy […]